“We get disrespected all over the place,” Lynch said late Wednesday night. “All we do is do our job and win games. And I feel like we shouldn’t be punished for that.”

And that was before NIU dropped from No. 15 to No. 16 in the BCS rankings Sunday.

The Huskies remain one spot behind Fresno State (9-0), the team they must beat out to earn the non-automatic qualifying spot for the Fiesta Bowl, and two spots ahead of Central Florida (8-1), the leader of the former Big East. If Central Florida or No. 21 Louisville were to pass NIU and Fresno State, the non-AQ teams would have to reach the top 12, not just the top 16, to go to the Fiesta Bowl.

NIU coach Rod Carey said he doesn’t pay attention to how the nation views NIU.

“I’ve got a building full of people in here that work together nonstop, so I don’t have time. ... It just is what it is,” Carey said Friday.

Lynch and the Huskies are certainly respected in the MAC. Lynch was named MAC West Offensive Player of the Week for a school-record sixth time in 10 games Monday. Lynch had 468 yards of offense against Ball State, running for 123 yards and completing a career-high 26 passes in 32 attempts for a season-high 345 yards and a career-high 81.3 completion percentage.

“He’s as special a football player as there has been in our confrence in a long time,” Toledo coach Matt Campbell said on the MAC teleconference Monday.

Toledo (7-3, 5-1) hosts NIU (10-0, 6-0) Wednesday night on ESPN2 with the Huskies trying to wrap up their fourth consecutive MAC West title. But the main topic on Monday’s teleconference was the perceieved lack of respect for the Huskies, which remained No. 20 in the Associated Press poll, and how it could hurt their BCS hopes. Last year, NIU was the first MAC team to ever play in a BCS bowl, losing to Florida State in the Orange Bowl.

“We want to go back to a BCS bowl and we want to win,” Lynch said after the Ball State win.

That’s not entirely in the Huskies’ hands. Not even if Fresno State loses.

“That’s an issue of the beast,” Campbell said. “Sometimes our conference is underrated.”

Maybe NIU can change that for the MAC. Eventually, anyway.

“As we go, we’ll continue to get national recognition,” said first-year Western Michigan coach P.J. Fleck, a former NIU star receiver and assistant coach whose 1-10 Broncos play NIU next week. “We have to continue the success and the consistency of the success, much like Boise State did. When you do it once or twice every five years, that’s when people diminish what you are doing.

“What we have to do is get everybody else to believe it, because I believe it. Heck, I helped build it. They’ve got me sold. I was part of that whole rebuilding process. I recruited a lot of those seniors.

“They should be ranked higher than they are. They’ve got 100 percent of my respect.”